General provisions for sea turtles
1. Purse seiners shall avoid encircling sea turtles and shall release encircled or entangled sea turtles, including on FADs. They shall report interactions between purse seines or FADs and sea turtles to their flag Member State.
2. Pelagic longline vessels shall carry and use safe-handling, disentanglement and release equipment capable of releasing sea turtles in a manner that maximises their chances of survival.
3. Fishermen on pelagic longline vessels shall use the equipment referred to in paragraph 2 in accordance with Annex VI, in order to maximise the chances of sea turtle survival.
4. Member States shall train fishermen on pelagic longline vessels in safe handling and release techniques.
Reporting obligations for sea turtles
1. Member States shall collect and transmit to the Commission, by 30 June of each year, the information on the interactions of their vessels with sea turtles in ICCAT fisheries by gear type. The Commission shall forward that information to the ICCAT Secretariat by 31 July of each year. That information shall include:
(a)
catch rates, gear characteristics, times and locations, target species and disposition status (i.e. discarded dead or released alive);
(b)
a breakdown of interactions by sea turtle species; and
(c)
the nature of the hooking or entanglement (including with FADs), bait type, hook size and type, and the size of the animal.
2. Member States shall report to the Commission, as part of the annual report referred to in Article 71, on the implementation of Article 41 and on other relevant actions taken to implement, with respect to ICCAT fisheries, the Guidelines to reduce sea turtle mortality in fishing operations published in 2010 by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
